Special Delivery
by Pheep
Summary: Valentine's Day. Unrequieted love. KD. Lots of Neal. (Don't worry, the sentences are longer AND complete inside!)


So there I was, sitting at my computer one fateful day, reading Swats' latest and praising her long and hard for it (Saraswathi, if you are a naïve and foolish person)...And I said to myself, do you know what I said, I said, "I ought to do a few challenge fics. They sound like a good break from Daybreak (no verbal pun intended)." 

And so I headed on over to WLD, and it seems that fate was smiling upon me for once, because a Valentine's Day challenge is up, it was originally thought of by Swats herself (note to naïve fools: Keladry of Mindelan and the No Good, Very Bad Day), and I had an idea for it. If you are a curious soul, these are the challenge requirements:

- Must be K/D (which one would assume, I suppose, what with this being a K/D site) 

- Must contain a valentine that goes to someone who the sender does not, in fact, want to be their valentine

Are you smiling knowingly? Are you arching your brow in intrigue? I, my readers, have done both. Except, I can't arch just one brow, so technically I was raising both. But that's not really important. 

Enjoy. :3

+ + +

**__**

Special Delivery

+ + +

It had all started out innocently enough: he had been lounging in his rooms, feeling lovesick and having absolutely nothing to do. Now, anyone could have told him that one who is wallowing in his love problems should never, ever leave himself bored and unattended, especially on the thirteenth of February; his own supply of common sense had tried, but it had been ignored. At the time, he had also been feeling impulsive.

The result of all this now laid open on his desk, also quite innocently. A plain white card whose only saving grace was to be cut in the shape of a heart - he had doubted that she would want anything much fancier. But what it lacked in appearance, it more than made up for in content.

Sir Nealan of Queenscove was about to discover this firsthand. After quietly knocking on his cousin's door all of two times, he tested his luck for that morning and tried pulling it open. To his delight, the door complied without even a loud creak, and he slipped into the room with just as little noise as his wooden accomplice.

It was still fairly dark inside, which didn't surprise Neal - it was still very early, after all. On the contrary, the darkness pleased him immensely, because it signaled to him that his cousin had yet to get up and light anything. Silently congratulating himself on his brilliant and nocturnal nature, he scanned the room carefully, starting with the bed as a precaution. There was Dom, a dark-haired head turned away from him and snoring quietly. Neal squinted at the sleeping figure, watching for uneven breathing. Seeing nothing suspicious, he exhaled and nodded to himself before moving on. His gaze fell upon the desk, and focused in on the objects scattered over it...

His eyes lit up. Oh, if that was what he thought it was. If it was...And he knew it was, too. He crept farther into the room, moving across it with all the stealth of a professional assassin, and lifted the card up into his hands. Bringing it close to his face, he read it over by the dim blue light that the early morning now graced him with. His face stretched into a wide smile. My, but wasn't that precious. Simply precious.

...And wouldn't it be a shame, if his foolish cousin (whom he had taken to calling "The Real Meathead" in his head these days) were to wake up without the courage needed to deliver such an important message? Such a heartwarming confession, it would be downright _wrong_ to leave it to be abandoned.

With this in mind, he exited the room, valentine in hand.

+ + +

A few minutes later, Neal stopped in front of the door to another room, a thoughtful look on his face. He was quite certain that the valentine's recipient would be awake by now, so interrupting a lady knight's beauty sleep wasn't the issue here.

What he needed now was an entrance. After a little more thinking, he eyebrows shot up, and he smiled broadly to himself again. Oh, this was going to be fun. Taking a moment to prepare, he closed his eyes, and when he opened them his face was no longer devious, but soulful. He knocked on the door and waited. 

A few moments later Kel opened it, awake and dressed as he had expected. She blinked, and her brow furrowed a little in confusion. "Good morning, Neal..." she said cautiously.

"Kel..." Neal began, and took a deep breath. "We need to talk."

A look of true concern crossed onto Kel's face, and for a moment Neal almost felt sorry about what he was planning. Still, he made sure that the melodrama didn't slip from his expression as she showed him in, and even considered pacing for a bit before the door closed. Kel shut it quietly before he could begin, though, and she walked over to him where he stood at the center of the room. "What is it?" she asked, sounding only a little wary. 

Neal looked away from her; he reached up and ran a hand through his hair, starting to breathe a little more heavily. "I...I stood outside your door so many times-" he said softly, and his voice hitched for a second as he barely avoided a snicker. "T-trying to find the right words...to tell you..." 

Now don't trail off, he told himself. Don't laugh. Keep it up. He looked back up at her, and took pride in the fact that Kel appeared to be very unsettled by his words. Feeling motivated by this, he took a step towards her, and his hand fell from his hair to rest over his heart. "Oh, Keladry - all these years, how could I have been so blind?" he heard footsteps. Loud, running footsteps...Oh, this was even better. This was terrific. Forcing himself not to smile, he rose his voice a couple of levels and continued. "All that time, and I never really noticed you!" He took hold of Kel's hands, and she gasped, clearly very alarmed at this point.

"N-Neal, what are talking about? What about Yuki!?"

"_She's only a fling! _You're _everything _to me, Keladry!" he insisted passionately, clasping her hands tightly. "It's all so clear to me now! So wonderfully clear!" he was nearly shouting by now.

Kel looked both embarrassed and horrified at the same time. These were very rare expressions for her, and Neal fixed his eyes on her in an intense gaze as he tried to memorize them for later mentioning. "Neal--"

The door burst open behind him, and it was only then that Neal allowed himself to grin. Dom stormed in, wearing what Neal noted to also be a very uncommon expression. 

"What are you doing, you Meathead!?" Dom demanded, sounding uncharacteristically frantic. His blue eyes seemed to glow for a moment, and his face sank into a seething calm as he approached them, his hands slowly raising without him seeming to realize it. "...First you rob me...and now this-this--"

"Hey now, relax!" Neal exclaimed, immediately letting go of Kel's hands and taking a quick step away from both of them. He raised his own arms over his head, shielding himself. "I'm just a delivery boy! Don't kill the messenger!" He cried, and, remembering the valentine now folded in his pocket, he pulled it out quickly and offered it to Kel. "...And speaking of which...Kel, I believe that this is for you."  
  
Dom's face paled visibly as she took the card - the face of someone whose worst fears have been confirmed. He turned quickly and made for the door. "I'm leaving," he muttered hastily, keeping his head down.

"You're staying," Neal muttered back cheerily, grabbing his arm. Glancing in Kel's direction, he saw her gazing down at the card in a complete daze, her face tinted a very interesting shade of pink. The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile, and he let go of Dom's arm as he walked toward the door himself. "I'm the one that's leaving," he announced, and strode out into the hall. He turned his head back towards them for a moment, and a wicked grin spread across his face. "Have fun," he drawled, then swung the door shut before either of them could reply. 

+ + +

Dom stared at the closed door for a while, his expression grave. "...." He closed his eyes and turned back around with a sigh, running a hand through his hair just as his cousin had done a few minutes ago. "...I'm going to kill him..." he vowed quietly. That said, he cautiously opened his eyes and looked over at Kel. She stared back at him over the rim of the card, a faint blush still coloring her cheeks.

Dom blinked, a blush creeping its way onto his face as well. "Um." Not knowing what else to do, he started to walk towards her, and glanced away at nothing in particular as he tried to hold down some of the thoughts that were racing through his head. "Listen, I--"

"Y-yes?" Kel asked suddenly, interrupting him. At another time she might have scolded herself for being impolite, but now she just watched him, a number of varying emotions blended together in her expression. 

Dom looked back up and stared at her for a few moments, pausing. Some of the stress faded from his face, and he sighed, then shook his head. "...I...don't know. Happy Valentine's Day?" He asked wearily. A faint smile touched his lips.

Kel smiled warmly, and took a step towards him.

"Happy Valentine's Day..."

+ + +

Neal strolled down the hall with a triumphant smile on his face, humming the tune of a sappy, dramatic song that he could almost remember the name of. Realizing that it was the love ballad that Kel and company had sang to him so long ago in their page years, he immediately stopped in surprise and smirked at himself, rolling his eyes at the memory. He would have to work on remembering the lyrics to that song, for the next time he and the lovely Lady Knight crossed paths...

Dusting his hands off theatrically, he shoved them into his pockets and resumed his humming, walking back to his rooms for a few hours' sleep. They would be teased later, of course. That went without saying. But for now, he would leave them be. Let those two have their holiday - Mithros knows, he thought, they both need one.

+ + +

A/N: ...Yeah. That's it. This was more Neal than anything, which is kind of weird for a valentine's day fic, but...what can I say. I like Neal. In fact, I adore him, so there you go. And at least there was that small bit of fluffiness towards the end there, right? Right. Reviews would be lovely, you know.

((And now a 3rd time: Happy Valentine's Day!))

~Pheep


End file.
